Tuesday, December 31, 2002

People try to measure how good a boardgame is in many ways, such asratings and counting number of times played. Total number of plays isprobably one of the most common. As a measure of how "good" a gameis, it's not bad, but it doesn't take into account length of the gameor replayability over time. That is, a 15 minute game that's played 6times is probably not "better" than a 3 hour game that's played 3times. On the other hand, using total time playing has problems onthe low end: A 15 minute game played 10 times is probably "better"than a two hour game played twice. Further, a game played every otherweek for a year is probably "better" than one played every day for amonth and then never again.

Various other metrics have been suggested, including Joe Huber's"happiness" metric which works well, but requires a lot ofbookkeeping. So, I've been trying to identify a metric of game"quality" that meets the following criteria:

Doesn't bias unduly for or against long or short games

Doesn't require ratings

Doesn't require overly detailed records

Doesn't overly credit "fad" games that get played a lot for a little while and then never again

Does bias towards "classics", though not overwhelmingly

Measures "replayability" in some form

Is easily understood and doesn't require deep understanding of statistics

Is easily calculated

Can be readily used on a per year basis or on a "all-time" basis

So, after careful consideration and analysis, I've come up with ametric that I like and thought I would share it and suggest it to all:-) I've actually suggested this metric before, off-handedly but Ilike it even more now that I've looked at the actual statistics for myown games.

The metric is the "month metric", in which a game receives 1 point forevery unique month in which it is played. For example, I playedMedici in both February and March of this year, so for the year itscores a "2", but it also was played in 5 different months over2000-2001, so it's total score is a "7".

For my own games, only a dozen games have an all-time score above 10and there's a nice distribution below that. For the year, naturally a"12" is the highest possible score, though I had no game above 7, buta solid group (9 games) at 6 or above. The other nice thing aboutthis metric is that I find it is (probably unsurprisingly) heavilycorrelated with all of the other metrics discussed (# plays, totaltime playing, "happiness").

Monday, December 2, 2002

Over the past few years, I've seen several discussions about boardgame advocacy. In the past, I've had the opinion that board gameadvocacy wasn't actually a good thing. I've relatively recently (thepast 6 months) changed my mind.

My original thinking was as follows: "advocacy", or trying to spreadthe word about board games is motivated by several desires, one ofwhich was to increase the number of board gamers out there.Unfortunately, more people isn't always a good thing. More peoplemeans a bigger market, and means more money is involved, and money canbe a bad influence as well as a good influence. Take the Internet,for example. Back in the "old days", the net had a nice small"community" feel. People shared information, were self-policing, andwere usually fairly "neighborly". In contrast, the net today involvesa lot of outside policing, discouraging of sharing information, and isoften an unfriendly place. However, in return we've gotten a greatdeal. There are a great many exciting communities, a wealth ofcontent, and long term commercial viability, even if many .com's blowup along the way. I didn't see the same benefits for growth of theboard game community. As it is, I have more than enough games toplay, more than enough people to play them with, and noone complainsif people share rules, post them online, or otherwise do things thata "big business" involvment might prevent. However, I've come to theconclusion that the benefits of growth outweigh the costs, especiallyif as a community, we're careful.

Specifically, the reasons I see for advocating board games are manyfold:

"Lost Spielfrieks"

There's a lot of people out there who don't know these games ofours exist, and when they discover them, they are thrilled and excitedand it brings a great deal of happiness to them. Advocacy helps makepeople aware of these games who may be very interested but aren'totherwise aware of them.

Casual Gamers

I used to be more skeptical on this point, but I now believe thereare a lot of people out there who may never become heavy gamers butgenuinely enjoy these games of ours occasionally. This may be asoften as monthly or as infrequently as a couple of times a year, butthey're out there. I'm often reluctant to push my hobby on my friendsor family, but often find that I don't need to push; they pull. Aftera surprising interest last year, I brought several games toThanksgiving this year, my cousins, uncles, aunts and parents allenjoyed the games (Zirkus Flohcati, Puerto Rico, TransAmerica were allbig hits). Sharing games with casual gamers is a good thing.

Social Good

This is the arrogant reason where I say "my hobby makes theworld a better place", and maybe I'm just deluded, but seeing articlesthat show that href=http://www.alzheimersupport.com/library/showarticle.cfm/ID/1650/e/1/T/Alzheimers/>playinggames helps prevent Alzheimers or Frank Hamrick's href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spielfrieks/message/22215>storyabout playing games at the Ronald McDonald House really make mebelieve that games are a good thing. This is in no way to imply thatany other particular hobbies aren't good for society, it's justthat I think board games are a good one.

Market Size

While I have some concern that a too large market has thepotential to make the board gaming industry too much about money,having it be large enough to support the game designers and companiesis obviously important too. Many many games are produced out of loveof games rather than love of money, but if "board games" as a productare a complete failure, the quality (at least of production) andavailability will drop. I don't want to see the board game industryever become as big business focuesed as certain other entertainmentindustries (music, movies, or even mass market toys), but I don'tthink there's much risk of that. A moderate increase (say, a factorof 2-5 in the US) would do a lot to improve the success of companieslike Alea (part of Ravensburger) and Rio Grande.

Given this thinking I've been pleased to see these two recent"mainstream press" articleson these games of ours, one in href=http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/021209/misc/9diversions.htm>USNews and another in href=http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2002/foth021125.htm>The Motley Fool.

Sunday, November 24, 2002

I've put up my Essen 2002 photos. I'vealso played several games of Trias, ad acta, ZooSim, and FischeFluppen Frikadellen, and all have held up well. The only one I'mbeginning to have some questions about is "ZooSim", which seems tohave a bit of a rich-get-richer problem. Next time I play I thinkI'll play with a fixed income variant. That is, everyone gets 3income at the end of each round.

Saturday, November 16, 2002

The first part of the auction was a series of "box lots", where 1 to 3 boxesfull of games were auctioned at once. They went for prices ranging from $15 toover $300, typically $50 or so per box. There were about 350 boxes done thisway. They included miscellaneous junk, prototypes, sid's notes, and valuablestuff like Eon CE expansions. Many spielfrieks won lots.

After a short break, they started the individual game auctions. Most of this isolder stuff and often went for quite a bit individually. A 1941 Wizard of Ozboard, with no box, pieces or rules went for $190. Few spielfrieks I noticedbid on these.

Finally, part way through the individual games, they did the shelf lots, wherethe most spielfieky style games were. Many 3M games, as well as a lot ofGerman games went in these lots. Among other things, I got myself an instant 3Mbookshelf collection.The SPI games brought some of the higher prices of the event.

The whole auction wrapped up around 7, and a small amount of trading amongstbuyers occured. Overall, a very nice event.

An important note was that despite selling about 10,000 games, this was only alittle more than half of the collection. The rest will be auctioned in thespring.

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

I played Cannes, the new Splotter release. It's been characterized as"Roads and Boats"-lite, and while it certainly shares severalqualities with R&B, it stands nicely on its own without supplantingR&B or feeling less interesting than R&B.

The theme is about making movies, which require a variety of resources(computers, people, and beer, which produce special effects, scriptsand stars, in various combinations) in multiple stages. There aremultiple types of movies (sci-fi movies, action movies, and theamusingly translated "girlie movies" aka chick flicks) which requiredifferent resources. This part of the game is interesting, but notespecially novel.

The really clever part of the game is how you access the resources andproduction mechanisms. There are hexagonal tiles, which playerscontrol the layout of, and then each player has five rods which theyuse to form a "network" of connections between tiles. Only thosetiles connected to one's network are usable. This means you have tocarefully layout tiles and gradually change your network as yourresource and production needs change, all while other players areimpinging on the same space. Further, only a limited number ofresources can be retained between turns.

The play is very tense, and the timing of the endgame is interesting.Like in Roads & Boats, the key to doing well seems to be to set up aproduction "machine" as quickly as possible, and then run it longerand better than the other players. Of course, other players mayattempt to interfere with your machine. Overall, the tension andinteraction was very nice, and the theme was engaging and fun, thoughone player found the production hierarchy a little non-intuitive.

The components are also worth mentioning, as they are somewhat nicerthan many Splotter games in the past. They aren't quite up to themajor German publishing standards, but they are very nice all thesame, particularly more so than Roads & Boats.

I look forward to playing this one more, and if this sort ofproduction game is interesting to you, I highly recommend it. Thenetwork mechanism is very new feeling, so I can't quite compare it toanything else I've played, which alone makes this game worth trying.

Sunday, October 20, 2002

Well, I just got back from Essen, and thought I'd post some quickcomments. This is my second time to Essen, and you can href=http://www.mkgray.com:8000/essen/>read about my trip in 2000, if you want. This year,I was only there for the end of Thursday and all of Friday andSaturday. The "buzz" of the fair was Friedman Friese's new game"Fische Fluppen Frikadellen", in which players can switch betweentables and multiple copies of the game. I didn't get a chance to playthis, but it seemed very well received.

I'll discuss other games below, but another nice thing about Essenthis year was I knew far more people there. It was great to see ScottAlden, Greg Schloesser, James Miller, Mik Svellov, and many others.

Trias

This game of plate tectonics from Gecko Games was featured in the Doris& Frank booth, and though the art was by Doris, the game was not byFrank, but Ralf Lehmkuhl. I was very impressed with this game, and itseems to have a variety of interesting options and the continentaldrift mechanics are very nice. I'll try to write more later, but thebasic idea is one is competing for control over the new continentsthat are being formed. On each players turn, they have some controlover the drift, and then action points to do things such as force moredrift, reproduce, move, and the like. Very nice. The only negativecomments I heard was that it was a bit dry, but I didn't find it so,and unless players are very ponderous, it moved along at a good pace.

color=f8f0ff>ad acta

This small production game has a theme that seems hard to makeinteresting: paper pushing. But, the game is quite fun, and lendsitself well to its theme. Each player runs an office, and documentsget pushed around and processed by various offices before being filed.Precise timing of this processing is key to the game, as differentdocuments score different points depending on when the are filed. Thegame is all about queue management, as documents come in to offices ona last in first out basis. A few special action cards mix things upnicely. Some found parts of a little too chaotic and hard to track,and I see where he's coming from, but I very much enjoyed andrecommend the game.

color=f8f0ff>ZooSim

This is a beautifully produced new game from Cwali, where playersproduce competing zoos, attempting to attract the most visitors. Thisgame has a few nice mechanics that interlock nicely. Playersparticipate in a series of blind auctions for tiles which are layed ina domino-like fashion, and compete for dominance in several categories(types of animals and trees) as well as receiving bonuses for creatingpath loops. I like auction games, so that part appealed to me, but Ifound the other aspects very engaging as well. The art is also verynice, though some speculated that people might assume it was achildren's game because of it. In any case, highly recommended.

color=f8f0ff>Canal Grande, FFF, Cannes, Age of Steam

These 4 also got a lot of good buzz (highly rated in the Fairplaybooth, and spoken of highly by those who'd played), but I didn't get achance to play them. I picked them all up except for Age of Steam.I'll comment more once I play them.

color=f8f0ff>Rumors

Many people commented to Friedemann Friese that Frisch Fisch should berepublished. He commented on a certain irony in this becauseapparently it took several years to sell out, and only once it hadcompletely sold out did an upsurge of interest start. The possibilityof another publisher doing an edition of Frisch Fisch seemed to be inmind, but nothing specific, of course.

I also heard some other folks mumbling about the possibility ofFriedeman doing a new game for Alea. Would the box be green?

Nothing in the way of details, but a new Reiner Knizia "big" game fromHans im Gluck is supposedly going to be out at Nurnberg, andpresumably this is the Egyptian game Chris Lawson mentioned lastmonth.

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Despite having lots of interesting topics to write on, I haven't hadthe time to write here lately. Hopefully, I'll get time to writeabout Lord of the Rings: Sauron, Roads & Boats, and some Lord of theRings: The Confrontation strategy.

All this will probably have to wait though, since I'm off to Essen,and presumably that will be the most interesting thing to write aboutfor a little while. I hope to have some stuff up here early nextweek.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

This past weekend, I hit the 500 mark for games played this year.There was some discussion of people's current games for the year on href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spielfrieks/>spielfrieks, and Ithought I'd include my post here.

Games played: 502Different Games Played: 216New to me games: 120Number of people played with: 187

While there are some games I enjoy a great deal, what I really enjoyis variety. Despite this, I've already hit 10+ and 5+ for many gamesthis year, though a great many games that have been played once (131)or twice (42).

The games marked with *'s are the "few or no plays before this year"games.

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

I decided to pick up the new game "Squint" from Out of the Box thispast weekend, and got to play a few games. I was reasonably pleased.The very basic idea is Pictionary-like with cards with varioussquiggles, circles and lines which you have to use to "draw"with. There are three difficulty levels and you determine each timewhich to use by a die roll. After a couple of games this way, wefound the hardest ones were the most enjoyable, so we played with justthose, and that works very well. Next time, I may use the variationof allowing the person who is "drawing" to do any or all of the wordson the card. That way, they can go conservative and do the easier onefor fewer points or the harder one, or try to get multiple one'sguessed.

Thursday, September 5, 2002

ABC Newshref=http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/hobbies020903.html>has a story on obsessive hobbyists, and includes a bit on theassociate dean of the Rice school of engineering, Tony Elam, who is an avid(>4000 games) board game collector. He likes Puerto Rico.

Sunday, August 25, 2002

I was recently in St. Louis, and decided to stop by a local gamestore, "The Fantasy Shop", which I had seen mentioned on r.g.b. Itturned out to be heavily weighted towards comics and RPGs, but with ahandful of German-style games. It also turned out that luck was withus and the store was having a "Moonlight Madness" sale that night from11pm-1am and everything was 20% off. One of the things I decided topick up was the new Knizia Lord of the Rings game for two players.

I've played it a few times now and am very pleased with it. In basicmechanics, it is not unlike Stratego with the addition of specialpowers and cards which change the effectiveness of some of the units.There are many special powers to keep track of, but after an initialplay the powers are reasonably easy to keep track of.

Another key feature of the game is that with a few exceptions, piecesonly ever move forward, which in addition to pushing the game toconclusion and avoiding stalemates, introduces some very interestingtactical choices. Often, a players best move would be to do nothingor move a piece backward.

The result is a game with a opportunity for careful strategizing,bluffing, and long term planning. It further has the quality that asingle fatal error can easily cost you the game, but those errors areeasy to avoid, in your next game, giving a steady improvement in one'sskill. Further, it appears that doing well at the game relies heavilyupon recognizing when your opponent has made an error (not alwaysobvious) and successfully capitalizing on it (not always easy).

It is possible that with enough plays it will reduce to a simplebluffing and luck game, but I expect it will hold up for quite sometime to some varied strategies. With novices, I think the lightplayer has a bit of an advantage, but am not sure that will besustainable with experienced players.

Friday, August 23, 2002

I don't know why, but the practice of giveng a description of playfollowed by a often extremely brief evaluation and calling that a"game review" has been bugging me lately. I've never been especiallyfond of this approach, but for some reason it's been something I'venoticed a lot lately. If I'm going to like a game because of itsmechanics, I will be able to tell that from a brief description justas well as from an in depth description. Knowing that there areauctions for priveleges is sufficient. Knowing there are three roundsof 6 auctions in which a variable number of priveleges which eachplayer can win at most 5 of is excessive and often distracting, untilI'm actually going to play a game.

Similarly, I'm more interested in people's opinions of a game, whythey liked and why they didn't, and I don't think every detail of playis necassary to understand that. Sure, I need to know that there'ssimultaneous actions to understand that a reviewer thinks that "thesimultaneous action selection seems to make the game very random", orsomething, but a one or two paragraph description is sufficient,rather than a regurgitation of the rules. Further, I'd much ratherhave opinions on how the play feels and how the various rules combinethan know what they specifically are.

For example, in Ra, the fact that different auctions are not justworth different amounts to different people (as in most auctiongames), but also may effectively cost dramatically different amountsfor different people is an important part of why I like the game. Thefact that there are 3 rounds and monuments aren't scored until the endand some tiles go back at the end of each round doesn't matter in myevaluation of the game.

Thursday, August 22, 2002

Well, it's been a slow summer. In July and August, so far, I'veplayed 54 games, less than half the usual rate, so as a result, I'vehad less to say here. Even more so, I've played very few new (to me)games this summer. A lot of TransAmerica, SpinBall, Puerto Rico, 6nimmt! and a variety of other new-ish and older favorites, but not alot new. Just recently I picked up Lord of the Rings: TheConfrontation and like it, and I'll put some comments here afterI play it a couple more times.

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Often, when I introduce new players to these games, I'm asked "Whichis your favorite?" or something equivalent. Usually, I don't have toomuch trouble identifying a handful of "favorites", but it raises aquestion of how to rank games. One obvious issue is how to comparegames of dramatically differing lengths. An outstanding 10 minutegame is going to be a very different experience than an outstanding 2hour game, which is a different experience from playing theoutstanding 10 minute game 12 times in a row. What might make somereasonable metrics?

Ratings. One way to do it would just be to rate games, sayfrom 1-10 or from 1 to 4 stars. The problem with this is it tends tobe fairly variable even for one individual. That is, sometimes a gamemay be an 8 and other days it might be a 6. Further, it doesn'treally catch the difference between games of different lengths. Youcould try to incorporate length in somehow, but that doesn'tdistinguish between the short game that you want to play over and overand the short game that you enjoy a great deal, but only once in awhile.

Number of Plays. I've got my gamesthat get played a lot page. This obviously works fairly well, buthas a natural bias towards shorter games. I would guess that most ofthe truly great games (to me) will make this list someday, but forsome of the longer games, it will take a while. Further, a number ofgreat but not-quite-as-great games make this list because they are soshort.

Total time playing. This seems like a pretty good measure, butit has bias against the short games. If I make the decision to play agame 15 times, that implies it is pretty good. Two plays of a two hourgame doesn't to me imply it is better than the 10-minute game I play15 times.

Replayability. This is a metric which I define as "the numberof 1 month periods in which the game has been played". This means agame which gets played 7 times all at once and is never played againgets a "1". On the other hand, a game that gets 2 plays and then isplayed again once a month for the next 5 months gets a "6". Thisworks a little better than number of plays, but also tends to favorshort games.

Happiness. Joe Huber suggested this formula: take a rating ofa game, subtract a baseline, and multiply it times the total timespent playing a game. It avoids the bias against long games byincluding length in the calculation, and mitigates the bias againstshort games by introducing the rating. Overall, this is probably the"ranking system" I'm most fond of. So, without further ado:

The list doesn't change all that frequently, but it certainly does alittle bit.

Of course, then there's the notion of "what's hot now", and a littletweak to the happiness formula to incorporate "newness" and number ofrecent plays. This year's "hot" games for me have been: Puerto Rico,SpinBall, Industrial Waste, TransAmerica, Crokinole, Lord of theRings, Alles im Eimer, Pueblo, Haste Worte? and Hamster Rolle.

Wednesday, May 29, 2002

Reading the header, you might assume I mean playing games with thewrong rules. I don't mean that at all. I've observed occasionallythat people (including myself) are just playing a game wrong. All therules are right, but something else is wrong. Sometimes it is amatter of thinking too much or thinking too little. Other times, aparticular strategy is ignored. Others, the game is treated tooseriously, or too lightly.

Obviously, the best way to avoid this is to play with others who have"played right" before, but this isn't always possible. It struck meas obvious that Apples to Apples should never be treated as a seriousstrategy game, but I've seen people play it that way. Unsurprisinglyit isn't fun. In a similar vein, Space Beans is best played fast.Play slowly and it's not so great. Princes of Florence, played withplayers who aren't aware of the relative value of jesters andlandscapes can create a very "wrong" game.

In others "wrong" is a matter of perspective. There are two stylesI've observed to playing Sticheln: "nasty" and "selfish". If everyoneplays with one style, it works great. If some people play "nasty" andothers "selfish", usually one of the "selfish" players wins, and theothers lose, and the "nasty" player gets to play kingmaker. ModernArt is often the same way. I've played both "high" and "low" games ofModern Art, where the prices tend in the eponymous direction. If youget a mix of "high" and "low" players, the game can be veryunsatisfying. Can't Stop benefits a lot from trash talk, but oneplayer trash talking and everyone else not is just weird.

Some "wrong" ways of playing aren't so wrong, and some of them can befixed with minor mechanical changes. Vinci is one of my favoriteexamples here. Even played "wrong" this is a great game, but the"wrong" way to play (in my opinion) usually ends up with playersbogging down in the last round or two trying to squeeze every lastpoint of delta they can out of their position relative to the leaders.Played in a much more free-wheeling manner, this game is even morefun. A simple rules change of playing with hidden scoringdramatically changes the style of play in these final rounds, and inmy opinon, for the better.

There's a few games that I think I must be playing "wrong".Katzenjammer Blues, for example, I'm missing all the fun and most ofthe game, and I usually like Knizia games. What's the story here?I guess session reports help too. Maybe I'll try Katzenjammer Bluesagain some day, but until then I'll keep playing with others to avoidplaying "wrong".

Friday, May 24, 2002

German games are often noted for their often rich themes, thoughfrequently irrelevant to gameplay, as shown through artwork andnominal topic and goal of the game. In many games, the theme actuallyacts as a substantial mnemonic aid for the rules. Carcassone could beabstract shapes and lines with markers, but "roads", "castles" and"farms" are more evocative.

Some themes are more popular than others, but there is a huge variety.Themes range from the straightforward, such as world conquest (Vinci),or business (Industrial Waste), or exploration (Lost Cities), all theway to the obscure and sometimes bizarre, such as bean farming(Bohnanza), pig races (Galloping Pigs), and construction as restrictedby toilets (Drunter & Druber).

Thinking about these themes, it occured to me to consider themes ofnon- board games, and I thought about role playing games. There arefantasy RPGs (D&D, etc.), and there are fantasy board games(Elfenland, Alladin's Dragons, Das Amulett, Maginor). There areespionage RPGs (Top Secret, etc.) and there are espionage board games(Heimlich & Co., Inkognito, etc.). There are western RPGs (Boot Hill,etc.) and there are western board games (Wyatt Earp, Way out West,etc.) There are science fiction RPGs (Traveller, etc.) and there arescience fiction board games (Starship Catan, RoboRally, etc.). Thereare superhero RPGs (Champions, etc.) and, oh, wait, there aren't anysuperhero board games.

I'm not sure why this is, but I have some theories, none of whichsatisfy me. Maybe "superheros" are too childish as a theme forgerman-style games, but, there aren't any children's superhero boardgames I'm aware of either. Maybe superheros are just not a popularnotion in Germany, which clearly drives a lot of the board gamemarket, but then why would part of the fall Essen Spiel fair include acomic book convention? Maybe noone has thought of it yet, but thatdoesn't seem likely. Superheros give a convenient excuse for "specialpowers", in the same way that magic is used in a great many games.The theme is vivid and could readily be non-violent (saving people,apprehending criminals, etc.). I really want to see "Hedgehogman" byDoris & Frank (or, would that be "Igelmensch"?)

For that matter, there are many themes that seem sparse, such aseducation, medicine/health, Africa, and time travel (though there area few in each category) while other categories which don't seem to melikely to be that much more common, are, such as the Middle East,gardening, subway building, and evolution.

At least there's only one game about animals kicking over piles ofbuckets.

Monday, May 20, 2002

I played Kniffel Duell for the second time this evening, and have tosay for a game that is essentially a Yahtzee tug-o-war, it's ratherfun. I've always been fond of dice games, but not especially Yahtzeebecause of the lack of player interaction. Kniffel Duell solves thisnicely by making the game a tug-o-war. It makes good two playerfiller.

I've played Vinci seven times now, and played this evening with onlythree players. First of all, I had forgotten how reasonably quick agame it is with three player (probably about an hour). Second, Idon't think I will ever play again with public scoring. Hiddenscoring not only avoids the analysis paralysis that occurs in the endgame, it leaves a little bit of mystery and prevents players fromspending a lot of time trying to figure out how to hit the leader, andhence speeds the game along. This remains in my top ten games,overall. For the curious, the full top 10 (strategy games, excludingdexterity games, party games, and word games) is: RoboRally, BattleLine, Settlers of Catan, Lord of the Rings, Vinci, Traumfabrik, 6nimmt!, Schnappchen Jagd, Bluff, Euphrat & Tigris.

Sunday, May 12, 2002

If you haven't tried out href="http://www.brettspielwelt.de/gate/jsp/base/"> BrettSpielWeltyet, you should. It's a nicely done (if confusing at times) systemfor playing a wide variety of games on line. It's not nearly as muchfun as playing in person, but it's an alternative if circumstancesdemand. Mark Johnson has created a very nice href="http://members.tripod.com/MarkEJohnson00/bsw.htm"> Quick &Dirty Guide which helps deal with some of the German fornon-German speakers. My handle is mkgray and if I'm on, feel free tosend me a message.

Friday, May 10, 2002

I used to think I didn't like business games. I'm not sure where Igot that idea, but I was pretty sure they weren't my thing. Onepossible reason is that when I was first introduced to Acquire I wastold it was a business game, and while I enjoy Acquire a great deal,it isn't as much my kind of game as many others. I don't actuallythink Acquire is a business game. Acquire is a stock game, and a cashmanagement game, but it's not really what I'm calling a business game.

So, since not everyone always agrees exactly what a"<fill-in-the-blank> game" is, I'll define "businessgame" for how I mean it. A business game is a game that at some levelattempts to simulate the operation of a business which produces somesort of goods and sells them on a market. This operation may be at avery low level (individual workers, products, etc.) or at a very highlevel (product categories, growth rate, etc.). The level ofsimulation may be anything from detailed accounting down to individualunits, or some high level general business strategy. The productionof goods may be of only one type (typical) or of a few differentvarieties. The market may range from a mathematically simulatedmarket to draw of random "market" cards or the like.

Some business games I've either played a lot recently or played forthe first time recently include Industrial Waste, Funkenschlag, andSchocko & Co. The last one in particular is prototypical of what manypeople dislike about business games, but yet I like it a great deal.Most business games are perhaps somewhat more repetetive than otherGerman games. Markets and production details and prices fluctuate,but in many ways the conditions remain similar throughout the game.Further, there is often a lot of simultaneous action, and sometimes areduced perception of player interaction. In Schocko & Co., prettymuch all actions are in parallel for all players, and the playersinteractions is through a shared set of consumers and through playingof action cards on one's opponents.

These properties are clearly not true in all business games. Vino,another business game I particularly like does not remain the same asthe game progresses. The limited number of resources (vinyards) becomescarcer and more expensive until the end of the game, changing thedynamic greatly as the game progresses. Others, like Funkenschlag,have a slightly more complex marketplace that evolves over time, andin an occasionally predictable way, allowing for some interestingplanning options. Further, a game like Merchant of Venus completelyviolates the "simultaneous actions" principle, and players take turns(which is, in my opinion, the game's biggest flaw). However, ifplayed with the alternate setup variant, it has one of the mostinteresting "market simulations" in any of these games.

Some games that have many properties of a business game I wouldn'tqualify. Many of these I would categorize as stock games (Acquire,Palmyra, etc.), while others lack the feature of any representation ofthe business' operations. Samarkand is a fun set collection game, butdespite many parameters in common, it's not a business game.Showmanager/Atlantic Star is in the same camp. It's got a lot of theattributes: a shared market for resources (actors), a relativelyuniform environment, and a shared market for product (shows), butnothing about the operations of the business.

Obviously, I like a lot of different kinds of games, but it is veryintriguing to me whenever I identify a common feature that makes melike a game that isn't trivially obvious. I like certain themes,that's easy. I like auction mechanics, and I was quick to identifythat. However, it's taken me a long time to realize that I reallylike business games (operations, production, input and outputmarkets).

Industrial Waste, while on the lighter side as business games go, isone of my recent favorites. Vino, I've been fond of for a long time.Funkenschlag and Schocko & Co. both seem very good, if a bit on thelong side, and I'll see if they stand the test of time.

Saturday, May 4, 2002

A couple months ago, I commented thatI usually hit the point where I've played one unique game per day forthe year around this time. That is, today is the 124th day of theyear. This year, I've played a lot of different games. As of today,I've played 160 different games, which means even if I don't play anynew games for the next month, I'm set into the beginning of June.That's a lot of different games. I'm very glad to have the variety:-)

I played Careers, the old American game, this evening, and it wasrather fun. We played an old 1955 copy which has various anachronismslike "Be the first human on the moon!" and some politically incorrectbits like having a "gorgeous secretary" give you points. Overall, avery cute game though with several nice mechanims (you secretly setyour own goals, combinations of card play and dice movement, and a fewother bits). A lot of "roll the die and move", but still amusing.

Sunday, April 28, 2002

Friday, April 26, 2002

While I may write more later on the Gathering, I wanted to wrap uphere with comments on other new games, "old" games, the prize table,and non-gaming stuff at the Gathering.

color=f8f0ff>Goldland, Cairo,Lumberjack

None of these really impressed me a lot, but they weren't bad.Goldland in particular a lot of people liked, though it wasn't to mytaste. I like the idea of exploration games, and many of themechanics seemed appealing, but the whole thing just didn't gel forme. I'll give it another play sometime, but it's not high on my list.

Cairo I really wanted to like. It's a flicking influence game. Somecombination of lack of skill and monotonous play really left meunimpressed though. Lumberjack, I also wanted to like, but it endedup feeling rather dry. Oh well.

The only game I played which I'd actively warn people away from is "ADog's Life". Stay away from this one. I have so many other ways I'drather spend my time.

color=f8f0ff>Great New-to-me Games

I played a lot of games that I'd never played before but have been outfor a while. In the truly "great" category were Code 777 and FrischFisch. I also substantially enjoyed Haste Worte? (not entirely new tome), M, Elchfest, Entdecker, Guesstures, Pig Pong, and Tabula Rasa.

I was expecting to like Code 777, since I am in general a big fan ofdeduction games, and this has a reputation for being one of the best.I was not disappointed. This game is much like "What's That on MyHead?", but with colors and a different distribution of numbers. Theresult is outstanding.

Frisch Fisch, I had heard nothing about, but was described as a "brainburner", which I often find a positive attribute in games. ThisFriedemann Friesse game has some very nice mechanics. Simple tilelaying impacts where roads will be built according to a simple set ofrules (all roads must be contiguous and all buildings must be adjacentto at least one road). Placing a building in one place may causeseveral road tiles to get placed elsewhere. The somewhatcollaborative puzzle solving of everyone trying to determine if anynew road segments are built as the result of a person's play was veryentertaining.

Sadly, both of these games (Code 777 and Frisch Fisch) are out ofprint and hard to find. If anyone knows where I can get one for areasonable price, please let me know.

I don't have a lot to say about the other games, but I feel likesaying something, so here's a sentance or two on each. "Haste Worte?"is one of the best word games I've played in a while, but you need tomake your own cards. M is a great absract tile laying game I wish Ihad discovered earlier. Elchfest is surprisingly fun. Guesstures isnot that novel of an idea (speed charades), but the timer device isawesome! Pig Pong is exhausting. Tabula Rasa was a lot of fun andvery interesting, despite me being unimpressed after reading therules.

color=f8f0ff>Prize Table

I got very lucky with the prize table. The basic idea of theGathering Prize Table is that all attendees bring at least one (good)game for the prize table, many bring more, or bring some "ok" games inaddition to one or more good ones. On the final Saturday, prizes aregiven out. First, winners of tournaments from the previous year whichoccured after the prize table ceremony, followed by tournamentswinners from this year, followed by randomly selected people. Then,the process repeats, more or less until all the prizes are gone.

I didn't compete in any of the game tournaments this year and my teamdidn't win the Treasure Hunt (which was a lot of fun, see below).This year Alan decided to have a "target tournament", however. Theidea of this tournament is that some some number of people are"targets". They keep track of all the people they play with. Thewinner of the target tournament is the person who plays with the mosttargets. I came in as first runner-up in the target tournament (23out of 28 targets), so I got an early pick off the prizetable, forwhich I took Funkenschlag, since I had heard such good things about itand had just recently been very impressed by one of his previous games(Frisch Fisch).

My wife was called randomly very early and took Members Only. On mysecond pick I got Schocko & Co. In later picks I got a handful ofother games. In the end, I got 3 out of my top 6 picks and was verylucky.

color=f8f0ff>Non-boardgame stuff

Obviously, thoe point of the Gathering is to spend time with peopleand play board games. Further, most of the "spend time with people"is done by playing board games, however, there is some other stuffthat goes on.

In the "almost boardgames" category was the Treasure Hunt. This is apuzzle hunt style event usually run by Aaron Weissblum, run this yearby he and Brian Hanechak. The hunt was a blast. Basically, therewere four puzzles to solve, but you had no clues to the puzzles. Thepuzzles could be bought with "game bucks", which could be obtained bysolving other puzzles or by playing game shows. Overall, a very funhunt.

Other folks went off to an amusement park for a day, and there's alsothe photo safari, in which teams take a variety of amusing photos inan attempt to get the most points. I think some people even went andplayed golf.

The other regular activity of the event was eating out. A lot ofpeople got groceries and occasionally ate at the hotel or in theirrooms, but sometimes you need to get out. There's a strip mallcluster in Columbus with perhaps as many as two dozen restaurants,ranging from reasonably nice to very fancy. Ruth's Chris Steakhouewas yummy, but given the price I've certainly had better steak. Thesurprise hit to me was "Red Robin" a very kid friendly burger jointthat was very good and reasonably priced. It's a shame we don't havethese out here.

Thursday, April 25, 2002

Today I'm going to write about the good "new" games I played. None ofthese were amazing, but were quite good and I look forward to playingthem more. Those games are: Alles im Eimer, How Ruck!, Clash of theGladiators, Dschunke, Die Sieben Weisen, Maginor and Zahltag.

color=f8f0ff>Alles im Eimer

This is the closest of this set to making the "great" list. It's bySteffan Dorra, has an unique theme and is rather amusing. The basicidea is each player has a pyramid of buckets and is trying to knockdown their opponents pyramids. This is done by playing colored cards,which the next player must play higher than, followed by the nextplayer, until someone cannot play higher, at which point they lose abucket of the appropriate color.

A lot of different opinions on the strategy of building the initialpyramids existed as well as differing approaches on how to attackone's neighbors. No matter how many cards are played (1-3), you onlydraw one more, so an all out assault costs you two cards.

The game is fun, though with 6 it doesn't have much control, but stillworks well. Jay suggested the variant of allowing players to attackleft or right, and I look forward to trying that.

color=f8f0ff>How Ruck!

This is a cute tug of war game by Richard Borg. The game is quick andhas some nice elements, but it has a very unusual property which wasreported by several people; when you win, you feel like it was becauseof good play, but when you lose, it seems as though it was completelyout of your control. As a result, I'm not sure there's a lot of realcontrol here. It's enough fun in any case to continue playing.

color=f8f0ff>Clash of the Gladiators

As many have mentioned already, this is a dice-fest. It's a reallyfun dice-fest, but it's definitely not a lot of deep strategy. Thefeatures that set this apart as an especially fun dice fest are thecustomized teams and the animals.

The customized teams give you the ability to try out different stylesof carnage ranging from the full out attack to the net throwingrerollers. Further, the game is such a dice-fest that no strategy hasa conspicuous advantage.

The animals are a nice touch as well. Risky to attack, but worthextra points, and they provide an enjoyable and fun role foreliminated players that speeds the game toward the end especially oncemore than one player has been eliminated. Be the bear.

Dschunke

I played this one twice, once with some rules missing, and oncewithout. With the wrong rules, this game is pretty dull. I'm glad Iplayed it with the right rules. It's not amazing, and it's notexciting, but it has some interesting decisions and some nicemechanics. I'm not sure the whole is much greater than the sum of theparts, but the parts add up reasonably nicely.

color=f8f0ff>Die Sieben Weisen

I only played one aborted game of this, but it was rather enjoyable.This game has a nice feature that I haven't really seen elsewhere,which is freeform negotiated partnerships. Unlike something like Mu,in which partnerships are chosen in a structured way, here it isentirely up to the players to decide the partnerships.

The gameplay itself is similar to the Attacke/Ivanhoe/Taj Mahalmechanic where the last to quit a fight wins, but all contributorslose their committed cards. The injection of some powerful magiccards mixes things up nicely. I'll pick it up when it comes out inEnglish.

color=f8f0ff>Maginor

This much maligned remake of Knizia's Vegas was actually fun. It's aninteresting influence game with a substantial share of luck. Thetheme fits well and the components are decent. Overall, it's a gameof choosing your battles and carefully spending limited resources.It won't get played a lot, but I'll play it again.

color=f8f0ff>Zahltag

This was the first game I played at the Gathering. It's cute game ofhand management. Each player has a hand of various types of workerswhich they can put to work on a job, if they are the lowest bidder forthat job. Nice artwork and some interesting tactics.

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

The best thing about the Gathering is the people. In addition to agreat many people I've known before, I had the opportunity to meetmany who I had never met before, or had only met online. Everyone Imet was a lot of fun.

Some people I met were similar to what I expected based on meetingthem online. Greg Schloesser is friendly and outgoing, talkative andupbeat, and overall a great guy. Others were different from what Iexpected. For some reason I expected Mik Svellov to be reserved andquiet, but he was as outgoing as Greg. I think every time I turnedaround he was teaching a new group of people Goldland.

It was also great to meet many of the maintainers of other great boardgame sites, including Derk from BoardGameGeek, Eric from AboutBoardgames, and Mark Jackson from Game Central Station. I also playeda few games with some designers and had an interesting talk with MikeFitzgerald on games for the Palm handheld, as well "beaming" eachother a couple of apps.

Meeting Jay Tummelson and a number of folks from Funagain was veryinteresting, because the business of board games is intriguing to me.Jay clearly understands his business and I wish him the best continuedluck. It sounds like he will be doing a great many of the new gamesplayed at the Gathering.

color=f8f0ff>Size of the Community

All of these discussions about the game industry led to a fewconversations about estimating the size of the "board game community".A few relevant data points:

Members of the spielfrieks mailing list: 859

Members of the Unity Games (Boston area) mailing list: 181

Fraction of the US population on the Internet: 1/2

Games in a Rio Grande print run: href="http://www.kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/tummelson">2000-3000

Attendees at Spiel show in Essen: about 150,000

These numbers, combined with various other data I've heard seems toimply a total community size (in the USA) between 1,000 and 20,000 people,depending on how you define "board gamer". If you include people whoonly play Settlers, and only a dozen times a year, it's probablylarger. If you only include people who have collections of dozens orhundreds of games and play dozens or hundreds per year, it's probably lower.Personally, my estimate of gamers who play a variety of german-stylegames at least once a month is probably around 10,000.

Monday, April 22, 2002

So, I just got back from a great 9 days of gaming at the Gathering ofFriends in Columbus, Ohio. I played a total of 91 games, 64 of whichwere different, 49 of which were new to me, with a total of 105different people. I mentioned the games that were the biggest hits inmy note from yesterday, and I'll comment onthose first.

color=f8f0ff>Puerto Rico

This highly anticipated and hyped title pretty much lived up to theexpectation. There's a ton of descriptions of play, so I'll skipthat. Overall, the game is engaging and seems to lend itself to awide variety of strategies and some clever tactics. There's also anice brinkmanship aspect where players try to put off production aslong as possible to avoid helping others. Of course, eventuallysomeone decides it helps them more than others.

I only got to play twice at the Gathering, in large part because therewere so many other things to play, but in each game, differentstrategies succeeeded, and while some clearly work well (the Hospicestrategy and the Quarry strategy), none yet seem to be "the strategy".

TransAmerica

This was the surprise hit of the event for me. This game plays inunder half an hour, seems likely to scale well from two players tosix, and is a lot of fun. I'm not really sure how much skill orstrategy there is, and there may not be much, but it's a blast, andtied for most played game of the Gathering (tied with href="http://boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=3078">Knockabout)

Sadly, Funagain was out of stock by the time I (and many others)discovered it. I really thought I wouldn't like it since train gamesdon't usually do much for me, but this was not like most train games.As in other train games, you are trying to connect up multiple citieswith train track. Unlike other train games, that's it. That's thewhole goal of the game, and to be the fastest to do it. Good quickfun.

color=f8f0ff>Pizarro

I love auction games, and when I was told this game was all auctions,I was already favorably disposed to like it. Despite playing with asubstantial rule misinterpretation the first time, it was great fun.

The game is, in fact, all auctions all the time, with several nicetwists. Some auctions give you victory points, while others give youmore money for other auctions. Others give you variable points orother special abilities. Most important, winning an auction earns youa right to bid in that category in the next round. Those who win noauctions in a category are locked out after the first set ofauctions. Depending on the number of players, each player is expectedto win 3 to 6 auctions in that first critical round, possibly morethan once in each of the 6 categories.

The game play is reasonably quick and seems well balanced (once we gotthe rules right). A further nice twist is that each of the two boardsis double sided allowing for four different variations on the game.

color=f8f0ff>Pueblo

This new Kramer & Kiesling game is altogether different from mostof their work I'm familiar with. It's essentially a pure abstractgame of 3-dimensional geometry. Each player is placing identical(oddly shaped) blocks in their color and a "neutral" color, trying toconceal their color while moving the "chieftan" around the pueblo suchthat he will see your opponents blocks, causing them to score negativepoints.

This description doesn't really do it justice, but the result is apleasing abstract strategy and puzzle game. The game comes withseveral variants, only one of which I've played so far. The game isbeatuiful and surprisingly clever for how simple it is.

color=f8f0ff>All Games Played

I'll write in a little more detail about other games soon, maybe eventhis evening, but I figured I'd include my complete list of gamesplayed at the Gathering:

Sunday, April 21, 2002

I've gone a while without an entry here, but part of that has been dueto the fact that I've been at the infamous "Gathering of Friends" forthe past week or so. I'll write more here later in detail, but here'sa few quick comments:

I played 91 games (64 different games) with 105 different people. Thepeople were all great and I had a wonderful time. As for the "new"games:

Thursday, April 4, 2002

I have an eight-year-old cousin who I've been giving board games asgifts to for the past several years. It started out with Sagaland(Enchanted Forest) and has gone from there. Well, about a year ago,after Essen, I played Im Marchenwald with her.

Im Marchenwald is a cooperative memory game, in which you are tryingto rescue a princess by collecting 7 items before the evil dwarvestake her away. I played this once with adults, none of whom wereespecially impressed or amused. The game itself is a nice twist on a"Concentration" style game, in which you're trying to uncover aparticular kind of item. Once you've found it, that card tells youthe next item you're searching for. In addition to items, there arethe evil dwarves and a few other mostly bad cards. Not veryinteresting for adults.

With a seven- or eight-year-old, however, this is a great game. It'ssurprised me how much my cousin got involved in the narrative. Shewas constantly nervous about the dwarves, and excited and enthusiasticwhen a item was correctly discovered. The cooperative nature didn'tphase her at all. On other players turns, advice and suggestions weregiven, but given the large number of cards (49), it's unreasonable toremember any substantial fraction of the card flips. Instead you say,"oh, I think the glass slipper was in that corner of the forest" andanother play says "Oh, I think it was along that edge" and you pick acard. The game has great dramatic tension, and it seems wellbalanced. That is, you usually win, but only if you are attentive andfairly careful. If all players have bad memories, the dwarves willget you.

In the end, the really impressive thing to me was how much fun it wasto play with a kid, while with adults it was dull. Sagaland, to me,is about as equal with kids as with adults. Zapp Zerapp, similarly.Im Marchenwald definitely benefits from a child's perspective.

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Pounce is not a German game, but an older (early 90s, I think)American game, though clearly aimed at adults (the box art depictsonly adults playing). Sadly, it is out of print. This game has haseverything. And by everything, I mean it has a miniature toiletplunger and rubber mice with elastic tails. Oh, andcheese and dice.

The games comes with a trifold cardboard game board which depicts apiece of cheese. In the center is a circle. Additionally, eachplayer gets a rubber mouse (a couple centimeters long) with a long (30cm -ish) elastic tail and fifteen units of cheese.. All players placetheir mice in the central circle and hold onto the tails. The playerwhos turn it is removes their mouse from the circle and takes theminature plunger (actually, the plunger part is full sized, the handleis just short) and the pair of dice. They proceed to roll the diceand one of three things can happen:

They roll a 7 or an 11. In this case, they must slam the plungerdown on the table, trying to capture the mice which are sitting in thecircle. Simultaneously, the players try to pull their mice out of thecircle. If they are captured, they pay the active player one cheese.If they escape, the active player pays them one cheese.

They roll doubles. Play passes to the next player clockwise.The player with the plunger puts their mouse back in the circle andthe next player takes the plunger.

They roll anything else. In this case, nothing should happen.They should just roll again. If however, the plunging player plungesor the mice players pull out, they pay a penalty. If the plungingplayer plunges, all captured mice are payed one cheese. If a playerpulls out, they pay the plunger a cheese. If the plunging playerplunges and a player pulls out, no cheese changes hands, since bothplayers were in error.

That's it, and it's a great game. The game ends when one player runsout of cheese. The player with the most cheese is the winner.Obviously, this is a serious twitch reflex game, but there's also thekey tactic of psyching out the other players. When you'replunging, regular fakes are critical for both encouraging mice toprematurely flee and to desensitize them to the plunging motion whenyou do roll a 7 or 11. Further, mice players can motion as though toflee in order to try to get their opponents to erroneously do so.

The idea sounds simple, but boy is it fun. Here's some photos of thegame: [small] and [large].

Saturday, March 23, 2002

I played another game of Lord of the Rings with the Friends and Foesexpansion this evening, and we came very very close to winning, withSauron starting on 15. All the hobbits survived to Mordor, and wewere in tolerable shape, but Pippin had a ton of traveling cards andwe thought we'd make it. Sadly, Frodo fell, then Pippin, then Sam.Merry made it to Mount Doom, but failed to destroy the ring. We got77 points (60 + 17 defeated foes). We skipped Helm's Deep bydefeating foes. This is a great game, and I look forward tocontinuing to try to beat the expansion.

Friday, March 22, 2002

For those of you who may have missed it in r.g.b., Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games stated that the Rio Grande edition of Puerto Rico would be out next week.

Alea (the publisher of Puerto Rico in Germany, among other things) hasdone exactly what good marketing and brand building should do. As Iunderstand it, several years ago, Ravensburger, maker of a great manyoutstanding family board games, decided to start the Alea label to bea brand for gamers games. They created a numbered series of "largebox" games; they are Ra, Chinatown, Taj Mahal, Princes of Florence,Adel Verpflichtet, and Traders of Genoa. Additionally, they started asmall box series (Wyatt Earp is #1 and Royal Turf is #2).

Now, had Ravensburger released these games under the Ravensburgerlabel, they would still have been well received, but a few things would have been different. First of all, there's the chancethat some consumers would be turned off by the complexity of some ofthe Alea games and think that was characteristic of Ravensburger, andRavensburger would lose a customer of it's excellent line of familygames. Second of all, with the Alea brand they now have a reputationamong many gamers that dramatically exceeds the reputation (which isgood) of Ravensburger itself. Even with no review or knowledge of thegame, I would purchase an Alea big box game sight unseen. I knowothers who would do the same.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

[someone posted to r.g.b. pointing out that rubber bands candegrade over time an damage game boxes. This was my reply]

I've noticed this phenomenon myself and came up with something that Ilike a lot as a solution. Velcro makes a product called "One-WrapBrand Qwik Tape". If you've seen velcro tape before, it's like that,but much much lower profile (thinner), and the "rough" side isn't asrough feeling at normal velcro (hence less abrasive to game boxes).

Another advantage of this stuff is it is non-constrictive which means inaddition to not damaging the game due to rubber-band decay, it doesn'tdig little grooves into the cardboard either.

It holds the games together great for both transporting and forkeeping on shelves if the shelf isn't 100% full.

Monday, March 18, 2002

My theme for the day seems to be the defense of games (and versions ofgames) that are often maligned...

color=f8f0ff>Battle Line

I played my 30th game of Battle Line today. I've played agains 9different opponents, and I think I finally am reasonably skilled atthe game. It sure took long enough :-)

I lost my first game of Battle Line. This was back in fall of 2000.Then, I lost my second game. I began to think I was seeing the errorof my ways. I lost a third time. Well, I kept trying. I lost thefourth time. I kept playing. In the end, I didn't win until my 9thgame, and that against a friend who had never played before. Sincethen, my record has been 12 wins in 22 games, or about average. Whatan amazing game.

Some small portion of those games have been with the Schotten-Tottenrules (no 10's, no tactics cards, hand size of 6), but despite claimsto the contrary by some, I am convinced the tactics cards actuallydecrease the luck in the game and substantially enhance it. There arefew enough of them that it's easy to keep in mind what they all do,and the can't play more than one more than your opponent keeps theirpower appropriately in check. Many games, three or fewer tacticscards are played.

In my opinion, this is probably the best two-player game I have everplayed.

color=f8f0ff>Flinke Pinke

Here's another Knizia game that has another version. The "otherversion" here is also the American version, though no major rulechanges have been made in this case. The physical production of theAmerican version, Quandary, is dramatically different however.

Flinke Pinke is a beautifully elegant and simple package. A deck of30 simply produced but attractive cards and as many chips in 5 colors.It's small, it's compact, it's portable and it works. Quandary, onthe other hand is a beatuifully produced behemoth. Instead of cards,players have large plastic tiles. Instead of simple chips, again,large plastic tiles. All of this necessitates a board, since thetiles don't stack/overlay nicely the way cards do. The resulting boxis large (Pictionary sized/shaped), and while the bits are beautiful,it's way overproduced.

While I admire nicely manufactured games as much as the next guy,Flinke Pinke/Quandary is a great game and that greatness is notreduced by use of cards and chips. For me, space is the primaryconstraint in my game collection, and I'm much happier with FlinkePinke than with another unnecassarily oversized box.

I need to remember to pull this out more often, especially with 4players.

color=f8f0ff>Space Beans

I played my 10th game of Space Beans today. This game also seems tohave a undeserved bad reputation. Players who spend a lot of timecard counting can come very close to breaking the game, but notentirely. Certainly, played the "wrong way", this game can take fartoo long and not be much fun, but played "right", it's amusing,strategic and fun.

The "right" way to play is to not think heavily about one's choices,and play quickly. This isn't to say that one shouldn't think at all,but it's not a good game to spend time pondering. The mechanics makefor some fun planning and bluffing. The art, of course, is wonderful.

This isn't a game that will get another 10 plays very quickly, but Ienjoyed the first 10 times and more than got my money's worth.

Saturday, March 16, 2002

Looking at the general category of "dexterity games", it's one of thefew kinds of games I tend to be quite bad at, yet still enjoy a greatdeal. This is not to say I only enjoy winning, but if one losesa lot, it can be somewhat less fun.

I define dexterity games fairly broadly, including essentially anygame where manual dexterity impacts the outcome of the game. Among myfavorite dexterity games are Crokinole, Loopin' Louie, SpinBall,Hamster Rolle, and Pounce. All of these are worth writing more about,but for now I'm going to discuss SpinBall, since I just got my copy.

SpinBall is a game by href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/search.php3?designerid=235"> AaronWeissblum which is basically described in its href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=2794">BoardGameGeek entry. The description doesn't really do it justicethough. Essentially this is a game of trick shots. Because of thenature of the surface and the the ball, you can put so much spin onthe ball that you get some very elaborate series of bounces, all ofwhich seem to defy basic physics.

With inexperienced/less skilled players (such as me), you just shootfor points, and this is challenging enough. However, once the playersget somewhat better, the blockers become critical. Often, one playeris very good with a single shot, and somewhat less skilled withseveral other shots. Their opponent may be skilled with two shots,but not so much with any others. As soon as the second player scores,they can block their opponent's only good shot, and start racking uppoints. That is, until their opponent scores twice with their lesspracticed shots and blocks the second player's only two shots.

The variety of shots that can be made in this game is remarkable.Everything ranging from the three standard shots (straight/back,single ricochet, and double ricochet) to center bounces to "wallhugger" shots make this an amazing game to watch as well as play.

It may not be as strategic as partnership Hamster Rolle, as silly asLoopin' Louie or as stressfull as Pounce, but it really has a qualitythat no other dexterity game I've played has; it seems like magic.

Wednesday, March 13, 2002

One of the (many) statistics I track about games is how long theytake. I don't record the times for individual plays, but just use anaverage, either the stated range on the box or my own adjusted numberbased on experience.

At the end of last year, I noticed an interesting trend. I wasplaying more games, both in number and in total time, but the averagelength of the games I was playing had dropped dramatically. Gameslike Crokinole, Hick Hack, For Sale, the Pair of Dice Games and a variety of others had dropped theaverage game length down to 27 minutes.

This year, so far, my average is up to about 35 minutes per game.I've spent more time playing "meatier" games, like Lord of the Rings,Traumfabrik, Urland, Hase & Igel, Schnappchen Jagd, and manyothers. At the same time, I've continued to play Pair-of-Dice games,Hamster Rolle, For Sale and a lot of other "snacks".

All of this has led me to think about what makes longer gamessometimes more satisfying, but short games so appealing at manylevels. I think the food analogy is especially apt. Vinci is a steakdinner. Hick Hack is potato chips. Crokinole is a dried fruitsnack. Schnappchen Jagd is a big deli sandwich. Hamster Rolle is acupcake.

Some games, however, don't quite fit. Games like For Sale or href="http://www.pair-of-dice.com/games/knockabout.html">Knockabout are fairly short (each in the range of 20 minutes), butare much more "filling" than many other snack-sized games. Maybe whatthese games are is a nice vegetable side dish. That is, they'renutritious and good, but they aren't a meal in and of themselves, butthey aren't a usual kind of "snack". I will continue to make it agoal to have my gaming sessions be "balanced meals". All that gorgingon snacks at the end of last year was ok, but it left me hungry, andit's probably not healthy :-)

Sunday, March 10, 2002

The final two new-to-me games I played on Friday were Ulysses andAuweier.

Auweier was a game Steffan strongly recommended. The theme is one of birds mating,and the mechanic is one plays worms to seduce the female birds, and atsome point a "mating round" gets called, and you see who gets who'seggs. The theme was amusing and the mechanics seemed good, but thegame didn't click with me. With more plays, another aspect of thegame might add a lot of interest: you can stack your draw deck. Ithas some potential.

Bob was interested in playing Ulysses, as was I. The theme here isgreat: Each player is a God trying to push Ulysses' boat around theMediterranean in accordance with their own goals. The core mechanicis when each player proposes pushing the boat somewhere, and there isa "council of gods" in which card play determines if the boat goes tothe originally proposed location or some other. I really liked manyaspects of the game, though the artistic design of the board meant itwas sometimes distracting to identifying routes, and therefore it waseasy to miss a shorter route between two points. Further, two of theplayers seemed to be severely hindered by bad card draws, which mayhurt the balance of the game excessively. Despite this, it was funand I look forward to playing it again some time.

Saturday, March 9, 2002

After a slow beginning of the year in terms of games I'd never playedbefore, I got to play a lot of games that were new to me, and couplethat were "new" in the sense of being released recently.

In January and February combined, I only played 11 games I'd neverplayed before. (They were Wer Hat Mehr? (aka Where's Bob's Hat?),Witch Trial, Die Mauer, Democrazy, Munchausen, Ghost Chase, Imperium,Sky Runner, Fibonacci, Kathai, and Industrial Waste.) Yesterdayalone, I played 6 new games. My comments on them follow.

I played Jumbo Grand Prix, a somewhat older Knizia title which I hadnever played, and enjoyed a great deal. This one goes on "the list"(to buy). I'm usually only luke warm on set collecting games, butKnizia set collecting games tend to be much more my thing (this one,Zirkus Flohcati, Money, etc).

Someone had just purchased someone else's copy of "Siedenstrasse", aracing game, and we had 6 people, so we tried that. The rulestranslation was mediocre, but I think we figured it out. As we werestarting, someone came over to us and declared "Oh, I've played that,it was awful." Fortunately, it wasn't awful. In fact, it has acouple of clever mechanics. The core of the game is these actioncards, which advance you on the race track, but in some unusual ways,such as "advance the player in last place 5 spaces, and move your pawnsuch that it is exactly 5 spaces ahead of that player". You playthese action cards, but must later play them on other players. So,you end up trying to play them on yourself when it is most favorableor least detrimental, and on others in the opposite situation. It's anice mechanic, and the scoring (based on progress at various stages ofthe race) is clever. It was fun.

Drachenland, the new Knizia family game received some positivecomments, so we decided to play that. It's a game about collectingdragon eggs and gems, and has a really cool dice tower as a majorcomponent of the game. Of course, the tower doesn't do anythingexcept roll the dice. The game itself is good light fun, but nothingspecial. The clear gems are more valuable than I realized. It's mostclever mechanic is using "king dragons" to move pawns around undercertain circumstances. It's worth a play.

I was very interested in trying David & Goliath, a whist-styletrick taking game in much the same vein as many Klaus Palesch games(Hattrick, Sticheln, Mit List und Tucke). The basic twist is that thelowest card gets the highest card in a trick and the highest gets therest. Further, colors in which you take 1 or 2 cards count facevalue, otherwise it's 1 point per card. I definitely didn't get thisone, and while I still enjoyed it, other games in this style are moreto my preference.

I'll continue later with my comments on Auweier and Ulysses, the othernew games I played.

Thursday, March 7, 2002

For my wife's birthday last year, she asked for a copy of Pente, acommercialized version of Ninuki-Renju, a stone placing game. Thegoal is to try to get 5 in a row or capture 10 stones by capturingpairs. I'm normally only a moderate fan of pure abstract games, but Iwas very impressed with this. One factor that made it very enjoyableis my wife and I are very evenly matched (neither of us is verygood). Further, it is short enough that you never feel like an earlymistake fates you to a long and drawn out loss, as I feel someabstracts have as a flaw.

I recently played a couple of games agains the href="http://www.zillions-of-games.com/index.html"> Zillions ofGames AI (which, incidentally, runs reasonably well on Linux underthe latest build of WINE), and was soundly crushed, reassuring myperception that there was a lot of improvement that could be made inmy play. It may be one of the first pure abstract games that I'llspend some time improving at since Chess. If you haven't played it, Ihighly recommend it.

On an only somewhat related note, some time ago I learned Hex, another2-player abstract game. This one is a connection game, and it seemedfun/interesting, but not that deep, when I first played it. Most ofthe moves seemed obvious, but I never really played it very much, so Idin't know how much was just my perception. Well, at some point, Istumbled across Queen Bee, a computer Hex player. As above, I was thoroughlycrushed and only had a hope of winning at the lowest level. Maybethere's more to this game. I'll have to print out/make a hex boardand play against players who are closer to my level of play.

Wednesday, March 6, 2002

For the past couple of years, I've noticed an interesting statisticregarding my game playing. Starting on any arbitrary day (like, sayJanuary 1st), and counting the number of different games I play, Iplay very close to one different game per day, for about 4 months,when it begins to drop off. I'm not 100% sure what this means, butone interpretation would be that I have a roughly 4 month "refresh"cycle. That is, if I play a game, possibly a few times, I may havehad enough of it for about 120 days, at which point I may seek it outand start playing it again. Or maybe it's just an anomoly.

Last year, looking at the games I'd played that year, I'd played 102different games as of April 10th, the 100th day of the year. Prior toApril 10th, I'd never been more than 15 games "ahead". On May 13th,the 133rd day of the year, I'd played 133 different games, and afterthat point, I had played fewer different games than one a day.

So far this year, we have had 65 days, and I have played 66 uniquedays. We'll see how long the "one a day" trend lasts this year. Ifanything, I expect it to last somewhat longer than it has in the past.

Monday, March 4, 2002

I played this for the first time this evening, and while it was asolid game, I wasn't amazed. The bidding mechanic is nice (playerslaying sets of bidding tiles face down among piles of resources), andthe fact that most of the time, everyone gets one pile andsomeone gets two, but with clever bidding this can be changed, isnice. The building mechanic (making pyramids with a coherent colorpattern) on the other hand felt flat to me. I wouldn't exactly avoidplaying it, but I'm not likely to seek it out.

To some extent, this surprised me, as bidding and building are usuallymechanics I enjoy. I guess at some level, I enjoy "development" morethan "building", and this is definitely just "building".

color=f8f0ff>3-player Knockabout

Knockabout is an amazing abstract dice based two player where thedice only interject a slight random aspect. To me, it ranks up therewith "Can't Stop" and "Bluff" in the category of dice games, eventhough in most ways it is more of a positional game (like Chess).Well, it's a great 2-player game, and there is a variant for 3.

I love the 2-player form, and the 3-player version has all of the samepleasure as the 2-player form up until the end game. The wincondition in 3-player is for a total of 5 of your opponents dice to beknocked into the gutter. This means you can get situations where youhave 2 dice in the gutter, opponent A has 2 dice in the gutter, andopponent B has only 1 die in the gutter. If you knock one of opponentA's dice in the gutter, you give opponent B the win. This isn't sobad, but once all three players have 2 dice in the gutter, the nextdie in the gutter causes that player to lose and both other players towin. I keep thinking there's got to be a better win condition.Playing for complete elimination has the flaw of making one personoften kingmaker and/or bored as they are chipped away at.

Sunday, March 3, 2002

I played the href="http://boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=2449">Friends andFoes expansion to href="http://boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=823"> Lord of theRings a couple of times this weekend. I enjoyed the unexpandedgame quite a bit, and felt the expansion improved on it further. Therest of the group I played with (both games) were completely new tothe game, and with varying degrees of familiarity with the books,though all had at least seen the movie, so had some basic narrativecontext.

First of all, the game is a lot harder now. In myprevious plays, we probably won about half the time and lost abouthalf the time, and the losses were usually reasonably close. In ourfirst game with the expansion, we almost got killed in Bree, the newfirst board. We would have, but because of foolish error, but givenit was our first game on that board we let ourselves back out themistake. Well, we died in Moria. We had an amazingly bad tileshuffle (we got every event tile in Bree on the first two players),but still, we got killed quick. Oh well.

So, having gone through all the rules and gotten killed so quickly,everyone was eager to try it again. This time, we still had some badtile draws, but were doing very well against the foes. We ended updying in Isengard, still fairly early in the whole process, but we'dnearly achieved a military victory (we'd killed 27 of the 30 foes)with three hobbits killed. I worry that the game may be almostimpossible to win except by military victory.

Ok, that's not quite true. I just wonder whether by making the gamemore difficult, it doesn't make that victory more luck dependent. Inthe "basic" game, a long series of events hurts, but as long as youget a few turns in there, you can usually do OK. With the F&Fexpansion, a long series of events interrupted by a few action tilesis worse, because of the impending threat of being overrun by foes.The occasional bad tile mix in the original seemed annoying, but lesslikely to be fatal. It seems to really hurt now. That said, I reallylike a challenge, but would like to think it is somewhat more skillbased. I'm tempted to do the following; instead of shuffling theentire tile set, shuffle the 11 bad tiles and the 12 "good" tilesseperately, then create two piles one of 11 (6 good, 5 bad) and one of12 (6 good, 6 bad). Shuffle these seperate piles. Then, put thestack of 12 on top of the stack of 11.

Other than the difficulty issue (maybe we just had bad luck or playedpoorly), it is a very nice addition. It adds to the narrative, itenhances the in game tension, and is a lot of fun. I'll play it againsometime soon.

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

After reading several reviews and comments heavily mixed between the positive and negative, I decided to take the plunge and pick it up.

I played two games, both with 4 players. I didn't time them exactly, but I belive both came in under the 60 minutes claimed and the first play may have been under 45 minutes. I'll skip the basic play description and instead refer you to Akke's description on BGG.

Overall, my opinion is very positive. I'd give it an A- on the letter grade scale. With one exception, all the other players (a total of 5 others, over two games) also had favorable opinions.

In the first game, my impressions were positive, as were Mike and David's. Jake didn't like it as much. While sharing many aspects with other German games, it has a substantially different feel than many. For one, as has been pointed out in reviews before, it is somewhat lighter on the interaction between players. Jake's main complaint was there was a lack of "tension" in the game, which I'm somewhat inclined to agree with but I don't think is inherently a bad thing.

The second game, played with Mike, Ronald and Brandon, I enjoyed even more, and all playing enjoyed it. This game went somewhat longer and we had more opportunity to try out various things, and I think the card distribution was "more interesting".

After thinking about the game a little, I realized it has one very unusual attribute: few tactics, but heavy strategy. Most of these games of ours are fairly tactics heavy or are a more even mix of strategy and tactics. While this game has some tactics, it has substantially more (and perhaps more obvious) strategic choices than many games.

Of the tactics there are, many of them are obvious tactical decisions, but not all of them. The more obvious tactics: what sequence the cards are played in, the resource auction bidding, and timing of the accidents. However, there are some other more subtle tactics available. Selection of the cardsets wasn't used tactically at all in our games, but I suspect it could. That is, everyone tended to pick the card set best for themselves rather than considering how they might make someone else's life difficult. Another interesting tactic would be to save some money by firing employees and then promptly rehiring them after payroll is due. To me, the most interesting aspect of the game tactically is the endgame timing. Here's where card selection, holding cards over and whatnot can dramatically effect when the game ends and therefore who's plans are interrupted, who's are finished, and who has a big pile of garbage left over. There are other interesting tactics as well, such as flooding the market with raw materials to get it cheaper one's self. Inventory management also appears to be quite important, especially in conjunction with the endgame timing.As for the strategy, this is where the game really shines. Not only does a player have a lot of choices in terms of how they run their company, they all have substantial impacts on the gameplay. In both of my playes, I tried a strategy of reducing resource requirements to avoid having to purchase much in the way of raw materials. This meant my waste production was too high and I spent too much time managing waste and not enough time producing goods. I ended the game with a substantial resource overstock and my waste situation still not under control. In the second game, I used a similar strategy, but with more early growth, and some waste reduction before launching into full blown production mode. I controlled enough of the growth cards that I could decide the end game, and managed to complete two orders at size 20 in the final round. Other players effectively used downsizing strategies and uniform technological improvement. I'm eager to see how much the strategies vary and how much successfull strategies are dictated by the available cards.

Because of this heavy strategic focus, there is less "tension" which is usually generated by balanced tactical situations, but the waste management aspect introduces a level of tension that doesn't make this feel too relaxed. Overall, I'm very pleased with it, and recommend it to anyone who understands that they aren't getting a tactical game.

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.